One of Senran Kagura: Portrait of Girls’ more interesting features is that the way you fight can influence the personalities of the five female ninjas you play as. In a recent interview with the game’s producer, Kenichiro Takaki, we raised the question of how this personality-change system was conceived.

“One thing I question in games is that even though people will play in different ways, the characters develop in the same way,” Takaki shared with Siliconera. “You would think that someone who only fights with an axe would grow huge arms, and their battle cry and the amount of muscle they carry would change.”

Instead of simply representing this change through parameters and stats, Takaki thought of representing it in a more outward and visual manner, settling upon Yin and Yang styles that are represented in combat.

“The idea is based on Sadism and Masochism,” Takaki elaborated, explaining the system to us. “If your character cleanly lands multi-hit combos, her Yang (S) style will strengthen over time and her voice will come to sound more aggressive to show this.”

“Yin (M) style is also very aggressive, but by pulling off certain moves, the character will strip down to her swimsuit. She will forego defense entirely and bet everything on swiftly raining blows on the enemy. She will be taking much more damage and the pain that comes with it, but her attack power will greatly increase and she’ll be able to string combos together endlessly. She will become more sensitive to pain, and her voice will take on a certain arousing quality. Yin style fighting is very satisfying.”

The Yin and Yang attributes are shown via an in-game gauge to make it easy to see how far along each one is. Once they’re both maxed out, you’ll get access to a third attribute, and be able to switch between all three.

We’ll have more on Senran Kagura: Portrait of Girls in the days to come.